2CPU.com » News » September 2002 » Detonator 40.XX. How do they Stack up?

Our buddies over at Hot Hardware have put NVIDIA's latest monumental driver release, their 40.xx series, to the test.

The new Detonator 40.41 drivers deliver on what NVIDIA claims, though. Mainly, gamers get a little extra performance and more business-oriented users have a couple new features to increase productivity.

It's true other people have posted articles on these new drivers, but I was waiting for a site I read on a regular basis to take care of business.

While I'm still down in the US of A visiting Papa Hooz, Cory has been re-running the benchmarks on my Dual rigs up in Canada with these new drivers for the upcoming mammoth video card article we're preparing. I'm still two prestonia's shy of an i860 test platform (I have everything else), but hopefully we can get that resolved ASAP to make this article even more meaningful.

Check out their look at NVIDIA's new drivers.

08/14/2001 03:40 AM: Detonator 4: Free Speed by dadmin
It seems that the lads over at AnandTech got a hold of the soon-to-be-released Detonator 4 drivers from NVIDIA.They test a GF3, GF2Pro and MX. The results speak for themselves.Can't wait!...

11/02/2000 12:27 AM: nVidia Beta 6.47 Detonator Win2k Drivers... by J0rdan
Ahhh yes, more drivers from nVidia. How about some 6.47 Detonator's for Windows 2000 to speed up that boring day of yours? Grab them here. Use at your own risk, yada yada......

10/05/2000 10:04 PM: Official Detonator drivers from nVidia! by J0rdan
Yay, Official Detonator3 drivers from nVidia, version 6.31! (Insert witty comment about graphics card drivers here). Grab them over here....

09/30/2000 01:31 AM: Detonator v6.31 for Win2k... by J0rdan
It's the weekend, let's throw caution to the wind and install some new detonator drivers for our nVidia graphics cards! Grab v6.31 over here....

06/05/2000 03:57 AM: Detonator 5.22 OpenGL Fix by dadmin
As many of you might have experienced problems with OpenGL games locking up with the new Detonator 2 5.22 drivers while using Win2K, 3DSpotlight has a few registry settings that should improve your st...

05/31/2000 11:44 AM: 5.22 Detonators for Win2k! by J0rdan
3dchipset has posted the latest of beta win2k (and NT) detonator drivers for all nVidia based video cards. You can download them over here....

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 412 Joined: 2000-05-19

#18211 Posted on: 09/02/2002 10:02 PM zZzz...wha? Oh, sorry. Must have dozed off there while I was waiting for SPECviewperf to finish doing its thing [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

agroblock SMP Newbie Posts: 14 Joined: 2002-04-28

#18212 Posted on: 09/03/2002 12:34 AM No one is going to do it but benchmarks of older equipment (for us with TNT's and the like) with the new drivers would be useful. Should one assume that these performance increases apply equally to the whole NVIDIA product range after all? I think performance increases are more important for those users/machines where raw processing power is not a commodity (latest and greatest equipment).

fig_wright SMP Fresher Posts: 736 Joined: 2002-02-05

#18213 Posted on: 09/03/2002 02:52 AM Holy Shit! They must have fixed some issues I was having on my setup or something! I get: Q3: +26% UT (OGL): No change UT (D3D): +24% Strange, but I aint complaining Mark MSI K7D-L|XP1700x2 @1584MHz|TaiSol CGK760092x2|Crucial 1792MB PC2100 ECC CAS-2.5 @140MHz|Enermax EG465P-VE 431W|Abit Siluro GF3 Ti-200 128MB DVi/TV-out|SBLive! 5.1|NEC USB 2.0|Seagate 7200RPM Barracuda 30GB|Win XP & Ubuntu Hardy

Vuke69 Bitpimp Posts: 377 Joined: 2001-03-16

#18214 Posted on: 09/03/2002 04:26 AM They are a little faster for me, but they make my wife's computer crash hard after about 10 minutes in Neverwinter Nights. No problems whith the latest WHQL drivers though. I seem to always have problems with the latest and greatest Dets. I guess its time to get a new Vid Card.

AlanBarber Dual Wannabe Posts: 83 Joined: 2000-02-22

#18215 Posted on: 09/03/2002 05:19 AM I'd stay away from the new drivers if you have old hardware. I tried them on my diamond viper tnt2(non-ultra) in xp and they were terrible. gained a few points in 3dmark but all quake 3 based games took a major hit. lowered fps, bad tearing, artifacts, no matter the brightness settings it was too dark, etc. :confused: All I have installed is quake3, mohaa, and sof2 demo but I'm guessing it's a general opengl issue becuase directx games like ages of empires 2, roller coaster tycoon, etc were fine... i'm currently running 29.42s btw [root:/usr/src]$make buildworld make: Please wait 6-8 weeks for your world to be built and shipped to you. Thank you for your order!

Vuke69 Bitpimp Posts: 377 Joined: 2001-03-16

#18216 Posted on: 09/03/2002 06:56 AM I think the old hardware thing is my problem, I'm still running a PNY GF2 mx 400 64MB. I'm running just fine right now with the 30.82 WHQL drivers, and they seem pretty good. Not the fastest, and missing some of the fancy new features in the Dets, but they are stable. And whats the point of running a game (not that I play that many anyhow) 5% faster if it crashes after 5 minutes of play. I should just throw my VooDoo 3-3500TV back in there, it has way better 2d, is just about as fast, and scales very well with CPU speed increases. But then drivers become even more of a problem. Thats ok, maybe a Radeon 9700 will be in my future.

HotRod IT Inquisitor Posts: 126 Joined: 2002-04-04

#18217 Posted on: 09/03/2002 07:04 AM They fixed a lot of issues in my wife's machine. Her GF4 Ti4200 had a lot of texture corruption issues in UT and seemed a little lagged in Diablo 2. Tyan 2460 Dual Duron 1.1s On the other hand, My GF3 had problems with them. Diablo 2 and other DirectX games had a strange stutter to the refresh that seemed to make the lower half of the screen jump right a couple pixels every few seconds. UT worked fine, and falling back to the WHQL drivers fixed mine back up. Asus A7M-D 1700+s

glitch Registered User Posts: 1173 Joined: 2000-11-18

#18218 Posted on: 09/03/2002 07:16 AM they worked great on my laptop, but slowed down openGL on my Asus a7m-266d -- it now takes about three times as long to render something as it did before.

spikegifted I do what? Posts: 6144 Joined: 2000-07-24

#18219 Posted on: 09/03/2002 01:03 PM Originally posted by Jim_ Cory has been re-running the benchmarks on my Dual rigs up in Canada with these new drivers for the upcoming mammoth video card article we're preparing. guys! my admiration towards you folks know now bounds!! (i've my knee was in better shape, i'd be on my knees bowing and proclaiming 'i'm not worthy, i'm not worthy'... ) running benchmarks is a b!tch of a job! sitting through hours upon hours of repetitive runs is simply mind-bending... :eek: i once benchmarked a few rigs with a few friends of mine to see where things stood. to go through the fresh os installs, drivers, benchmark programs, reboots between tests, etc, etc... us not being pro's - it was a drag!!! :rolleyes: took us the whole weekend! :eek: with all that said, i really look forward to see this mammoth vid card article (as with any other reviews in 2cpu.com!!) spikegifted.net "At the very beginning of the 19th century chemists generally thought that compounds from living organisms were too complicated in structure to be capable of artificial synthesis from non-living things, and that a 'vital force' or vitalism conferred the characteristics of living beings on this form of matter." Well, how wrong were they? So much for dogma...

Arbelac Arcane Knowledge Guru Posts: 267 Joined: 2001-01-06

#18220 Posted on: 09/04/2002 08:35 AM Holy Shit! They must have fixed some issues I was having on my setup or something! I get: Q3: +26% UT (OGL): No change UT (D3D): +24% Strange, but I aint complaining Mark Notice how only the D3D numbers changed? According to some people at Tech-Report (http://www.tech-report.com ) The new drivers use point-sampling by default in D3D mode. This means no anti-aliasing, so it looks, and I quote from comments "asstastic". Tyan Tiger 100|PIII-1000Ex2|512MB SDRAM|Quantum KA9.1GB|2xSeagate Medalist 9.1GB (RAID 0)|3dLabs Oxygen VX1 AGP 32MB|CL SBLive X-Gamer 5.1! (w/o crackle!)|3COM 3C905C-TX|W2K Server SP2

Blakhart Registered User Posts: 4125 Joined: 2002-04-16

#18221 Posted on: 09/07/2002 10:55 PM Just another step by nvid to keep in the race, (as usual) at the cost of some of the worst mipmapping I have ever seen. They are simply unacceptable by me. This on both a gf3ti200 and a pny gf4ti4400. Oh for the 28.32s or 23.11s. Nexus7 enhanced combat/pleasure model.

Thinktank Unregistered

#18222 Posted on: 09/10/2002 12:06 AM I noticed that particle effects in Discreet Combustion were severely crippled by the new driver(40.xx) and would recommend anybody using Combustion, avoid this driver. I've heard that the new driver has problems with most OpenGL programs and would suggest you test your applications before you abandon the older driver. Someone should test Maya and 3DS Max. I am using Gainward ti200 and 30.xx drivers. MSI Dual Master -L and Tiger MP both with same video card.

2CPU.com » News » September 2002 » Detonator 40.XX. How do they Stack up?